


A Blacker Shade of Dark

by under_a_grey_cloud



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 22:07:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4683095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/under_a_grey_cloud/pseuds/under_a_grey_cloud
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean, Sam and Castiel do what they can to endure and eventually end the darkness.</p><p>The brothers attempt a very difficult return to the bunker in the Impala.</p><p>Castiel shows up, without an immediate foolproof idea about ending the darkness.</p><p>Castiel attempts to convince Dean that the situation is not exclusively his fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Driving Darkness

All that time spent running to the Impala, forcing the tire out of the mud by sheer will, speeding away like a race car, it didn’t matter. Sam looked over his shoulder at the funnel of darkness heading toward them like a black cloud. Within seconds it had enveloped the car, inside and out. The darkness was spreading everywhere so fast it was impossible to outrun.

“Shit!” cried Dean. “I can’t see a fucking thing. Nothing. This isn’t just darkness. It’s blackness.” He stopped driving and put the car in neutral. “What the hell am I going to do?”

“So you can’t see anything at all?”

“No shit, Sherlock.. Why do you think we’re stopped? Can you see anything? Dean asked.

“I don’t know,” said Sam. “Maybe a little grey?”

 _The darkness is just for me?_ Dean thought back to Death’s warning. _The darkness had started when he finally lost the Mark. Was this all really because of me? I brought back the time before Creation, time that I had no fucking clue even existed? The universe is broken because of me? Dean Winchester? How did that happen?_

“So you see total blackness,” said Sam.

“No, I see pink fairies in ballerina tutus,” Dean answered angrily. “Yeah, I see total blackness. I don’t just see it, either. I feel it. It’s inside of me, too. What about you?”

“I can’t see much, maybe one or two shades of grey. I can just make out more darkness oil-spurts coming from the ground. They’re growing. There’s not much ground left.” He looked up through the window. “There’s not much of anything left,” he added slowly, amazed.

“Really?” Dean asked. You can see all that?”

“It’s not that much.  I can see the darkness spurting out of the ground. Though the landscape is gone. I think the darkness absorbed it.”  Sam turned around so he was looking at Dean. “I can almost see you.”

“No shit. You can see me?” _This really is my fault. What the hell did I do?_ ”

“You look like a dark grey ghost. Are you laying your forehead on the steering wheel? What good is that going to do?” Sam asked.

“For real?” Dean asked. “You can really see all that?”

“Dean, I’m not exactly in the mood for kidding around right now. I’ve been telling you what I can see. So yeah, I can really see you.”

“I gotta talk to Cas. If he’s still alive. He’ll know what to do.”

“Why wouldn’t he be alive?” Sam interrupted. He sounded halfway between angry and scared.

“I don’t know. This is worse than the Mark. It’s like I made the Mark a thousand times stronger and spread it to the whole universe. What the fuck did I do?” He gave his phone to Sam. “Here,” he said, moving his phone in the general direction of Sam’s words.

“Got it.”

“He’s on speed dial. It’s—“

‘Number two. I know.  We got one bar and the battery’s almost dead. Don’t you ever charge this thing?”

Dean didn’t bother to answer.

Sam pressed two. “That’s weird.”

“What?”

Sam held the phone up to Dean’s ear. “Hear that? I’ve never heard static like that before.”

I have, Dean thought. It’s all around me. Outside and inside me.

“So you don’t hear that, like, all the time now?” Dean asked, trying to keep the quiver out of his voice.

“I hear it when I pick up the phone,” Sam said deliberately, as if he were talking to a three-year-old. “I can’t hear the phone when I’m not using it.”

“I hear it outside and inside me. All the time. Without a phone,” Dean answered, trying really hard not to sound shaky.

“I’m getting worried about you,” said Sam.

“Let’s see. We’re out in the open. Everything’s black. I can hear it inside me. I can _hear_ black. Nothing creepy about that.” Dean answered, too annoyed to be frightened. “Hey Sammy. You think you could drive the car?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “Probably, if you remembered to put gas in it.”

 _This is good_ , thought Dean. _Being angry at Sam. Much better than being scared_.  


“Where do you want me to drive? It’s pretty much the same everywhere I look,” Sam answered.

“Back to the bunker,” Dean said definitively.  “We’re already pointed in the right direction. It’s a pretty straight shot, and we’ll be safer there.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s already underground so the darkness can’t get in,” he said, unconsciously mimicking his brother’s belaboring the obvious about the phone.

Sam didn’t get the logic, but he didn’t want to press the issue. _Dean was starting to sound a little hysterical. Just keep him on track. It’s too easy for both of us to panic and that’s not gonna help anything_.

“I can try,” said Sam. He started to open the door to change seats.

“STOP!” Dean yelled. “Don’t open the doors or windows. The darkness will get in!”

“Dean, the darkness is already in the car.”

“But don’t let any more in, ok?” Dean asked. “I’ll just climb into the back seat and you can slide over the gearshift.”

After a lot of banging and cursing, Dean lay down in the back seat in a fetal position. He was shaking too hard to sit up.

“You can take the driver’s seat now,” he told Sam.

“Already there.”

“Just take it real slow and easy, ok?”

“OK, Dean.” He was really starting to worry about his brother. But he guessed he’d be pretty frightened too if he were blind and the world had suddenly all but disappeared.

Sam drove slowly and carefully through a very dark  grey and black world. He could just make out the double line of the road. After a lot unplanned detours onto the shoulder and back he made it safely to the bunker. He had no idea how he’d managed not to hit anything. Probably because there wasn’t much traffic, he thought. Not too many people are crazy enough to drive in total darkness. He came to a stop in the driveway and turned off the car. Dean was so quiet Sam thought he’d gone to sleep.

“We’re here, Dean, Time  to get up.”

“Are we in the garage?”

“No, I figured the driveway was safer. I don’t want to smash the Impala into the garage door.”

“Do it anyhow,” said Dean. Sam could not believe what he’d just heard. His brother telling him to risk harm to Baby?!

“Ok, but I really can’t see what I’m doing,” Sam answered, turning on the car and driving painfully slowly into the garage.

“Shut the door!” Dean shouted.

“What? It’s shut already. I’ve been driving.”

“The garage door. Shut it. I’m not getting out of this car till we’re shut inside.”

“Whatever,” Sam answered. “But it’s just as dark in the garage.” He hit the garage door control, got out of the car, and headed for the stairs leading down from the garage.

“Hey! A little help here? Am I near the stairs?” asked Dean. “I’d rather not go down head first.”

“Yeah, you’re practically touching them. Want me to walk you down?”

“Nah, I’d rather slide down the stairs on my ass.” Which is exactly what happened. He tripped on the first stair, sat down hard, and began to lower himself one step at a time.

Sam laughed. “You really meant it.”

“It ain’t the epitome of style, but it works,” Dean grunted. “Fuck!!” Dean shouted as he made it to the last stair and then hit his head hard on the door. Sam tried very hard not to laugh. He was afraid that once he got started, he’d never stop. He walked down the stairs, helped Dean to stand, and opened the kitchen door.

“Shut it now! The-“

“I know. The darkness can get in,” Sammy said, shoving them both inside and slamming the door behind him.

“It’s dark in here, too,” Sam said, vexed.

“Well, I didn’t say there’d be a party with a fucking disco ball,” Dean snapped. He really had been hoping he’d be able to see in the bunker. He stuck out his arms and tried to feel his way to a kitchen chair. He eventually banged into one and sat down hard. Sam handed him a cold beer which he finished in about five seconds flat.

“Feel any better now?” Sam asked.

“No. Get me another beer.”

Sam was pretty rattled himself, after the drive from hell, only to find the bunker dark, too. He opened two beers and gave one to Dean. They sat in silence, drinking beer and calming down as much as they could. After a little while they heard movement from somewhere inside the kitchen. Dean instinctively got up to fight, but Sam pushed his shoulder back down. “It’s ok, Dean. It’s just Cas.”

“Cas is here?” Dean asked, not quite believing until a familiar gravelly voice said,

“Hello Dean.”

 _Jesus, can’t he come up with a different greeting when I’ve just killed off the universe? Doesn’t that deserve a little more than_ “Hello Dean”?

He opened his mouth to say that but something completely different came out. “Cas I didn’t mean it this is all my fault I know I should have just forced Death to kill me or kill myself. Can you kill me? Right now? Would it make a difference? Cas I’ve broken the entire universe. What should I do? I erased everything.”

“No, you haven’t” replied Castiel, calm as always. “It doesn’t work like that, Dean,” Castiel responded.

“But I can’t see anything. I’m so scared, Cas.” Castiel thought this might be the first time Dean had admitted he was afraid of anything. “Sam can see a little.”

“Yeah, I can see almost normally now in the bunker, if black and white is normal.” Sam said.

“What the fuck is going on,” Dean asked Cas, “and what am I supposed to do about it?”

“Dean, calm down. For starters, you can’t kill Death. I’m surprised you could even kill his vessel. Death wanted this to happen. Death handed you his scythe. He never parts with that scythe. He knew you couldn’t bring yourself to transfer the mark to your brother. Death expected you to feint at Sam, turn around, and kill him. You played just into his hand.”

“How do you know all this?” asked Dean, facing the direction of his voice.

“Because I’m seeing back in time,” Cas answered calmly. “Shh. This is really hard to do. It takes a lot of concentration.”

“But why would Death want me to kill him? Dean asked. “Kill his vessel. Whatever.”

“Did you listen to me, Dean? You’ve just knocked me hack into the present. As for Death’s motives, I don’t know yet. Maybe he was tired of his job. Maybe he was very annoyed at you. You can be incredibly annoying, Dean. Most people wouldn’t dare summon Death once, let alone twice,” Castiel’s voice sounded preternaturally calm.

A little too calm, Dean thought. The realization that he hadn’t really killed Death made him feel like an idiot. Had Death been manipulating Dean to kill him, to release the darkness? How did Castiel know that for certain? Wasn’t it still all his fault? He didn’t kill only Death; the scythe had crumbled too. What if no one died anymore? There’ be too many people soon if no one died; old, weak, sick miserable, people, begging to die. Would the darkness take them? His head seemed to be playing back an old black and white movie at half speed, over and over again.

“What is a black and white movie?” Cas asked.

“Hey, have you been listening in on my mind again? I told you how much I hate it when you do that.”

“These are exigent circumstances. I am sorry I read your mind without your permission. It was much quicker than listening to you try to explain what happened.”

“So what exactly did happen?” asked Sam. “Dean can be a pain in the ass, but I don’t think he can turn the entire universe dark by himself.”

“That is not what happened,” Castiel paused, as if he were trying to decide how much to tell Dean and Sam. “Certain forces temporarily occupied Dean’s vessel to further their own agenda. You are right, Sam; no human has even come close to the ability to cause such a powerful event.” Castiel was obviously hiding something but Dean didn’t care. He just wanted to know what happened. “You merely set in motion a series of events of great magnitude.”

“So it’s not really my fault the universe is collapsing into darkness?” Dean asked quietly, like an errant child.

“No, Dean. One of the more curious ramifications of this development is that even assuming you had the power to stop it, you would not be able to do so. The primordial darkness had no enemies. It had nothing, other than itself. Now that it’s been called deliberately, it takes much more than light to damage it.” Castiel paused.

“So what does it take?” Sam asked.

“Basically, it takes everything.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dean muttered. “So if I hadn’t started the process-“

“Something else would have done the same thing. A locksmith is not responsible for all possible uses of all the keys he makes. There are many signs that the universe was headed toward darkness.  This would have happened eventually, anyway. You just happened to inadvertently find the right key.”

“But if I hadn’t unlocked it, none of this would be happening” Dean repeated.

“Dean!” Castiel raised his voice. “Look me in the eyes,” he commanded.

“I’m blind. How the hell can I do that?” Dean was definitely on the verge of tears.

Castiel gently turned Dean and put a hand on each shoulder. For a microsecond, Dean thought he could see Castiel’s face. Then all was black again. Castiel kept his hands on Dean’s shoulders, hurting him as he grabbed. “The darkness has nothing to do with you. You did not bring it on any more than a blade of grass covered with dew causes a human to trip, fall, and break his neck. Do you understand?”

For once, Dean wanted Cas to stop touching him. “Yeah. I’m not that important. I’m the blade of grass. There is no spoon.”

“I don’t understand.” said Cas. “What do spoons have to do with this?”

“It’s a quote from a movie, Cas,” Sam answered. “Don’t worry about it.”

Castiel sighed as he removed his hands from Dean’s shoulders. Dean suddenly felt not cold, but the absence of heat. He hadn’t realized how reassuring that heat was until it was gone.”

“So how are we going to get rid of the darkness and change everything back to how it was?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know. I will need to think and to consult my elders, if they are willing to talk.”

“So what do we do now?” asked Dean.

Castiel sighed again. “I don’t know, Dean. I really do not know.”


	2. Blinded by the Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel visits the brothers in the bunker.
> 
> He experiments trying to restore Dean's sight.
> 
> He tries to convince Dean that the return of the darkness isn't his fault.
> 
> He takes off on his own, and tells Dean and Sam that under no circumstances are they allowed to leave the bunker.

Castiel took a seat at the kitchen table and held his head in his hands.

“I thought you were going to-“

“Shhh, Dean. I need to prepare myself first. Sam, how much can you see?” he asked.

“Outside, not much. Here in the bunker, I can see almost everything,” Sam answered. “If you count seeing in black and white as everything. How about you, Cas? What can you see?”

“I see as I always do. Angel vision is not affected. I’m not sure what you mean by black and white. Do you usually see something other than that?”

“Colors,” replied Sam, slowly. “I see colors. You don’t know what they are?” Sam was getting scared.

“Oh, yes. Colors. I remember them from when I was human.  It was both very distracting and very beautiful at the same time. I prefer my angel vision. It doesn’t include colors, but I can see much farther and deeper.”

Neither brother knew how to reply to that.

“Dean, it seems your brother can see much more than you. Yet I don’t think you are blind. Close your eyes.”

“What difference does it make if—“

“Close your eyes,” Castiel repeated.  He pressed a palm against each of Dean’s eyes.”

“Open your eyes now,” Castiel said, his hands still covering Dean’s eyes. “What do you see?”

“I don’t know. Your hands are tickling my eyelashes.”

“Don’t think about it. Open your eyes and relax. Relax into my touch. It’s black inside my hands,” Cas continued.

“Yeah but it’s black everywhere. I don’t see the point.”

“Exactly,” said Cas. “You don’t see the point. If the point eludes you, then so do your eyes.”

“Huh?”

“Dean, the darkness has one job: to obliterate everything. It isn’t completely sentient,” he continued, “Not in terms that would make sense to you. But it is aware. And it is trying to absorb everything so it can return to its original state. It can’t do that, it knows it’s impossible, but it cannot stop trying.

“This world is entirely new to the darkness. It’s frightened. It’s frightened so it lashes out, seeking fear wherever it can. I don’t believe you are really blind, Dean. I think you feel terrified and guilty, and the darkness has latched onto those feelings and is absorbing them. Is there anywhere you feel truly safe?” Cas asked.

“Yeah. Here in the bunker,” Dean replied brusquely. “At least I used to. I don’t think I feel safer in here now than I did outside, except the darkness can’t get in anymore.”

“What?” Castiel asked. He tilted his head and looked confused. “What do you mean by ‘anymore’?”

“Well, the darkness had already gotten here by the time we arrived. I just didn’t want to let any more in.”

“What made you think you could let in more darkness?”

“By keeping the door open, dude. By making what was bad enough even worse.”

“How did the darkness enter the bunker?” Cas asked. “Had you left a door open?”

“No way,” Dean asserted. “We never do that. It’s our home. Our workplace. Our safe place.”

“Then how do you think the darkness got in, Dean?” Cas said. He waited quietly while Dean tried to formulate a response. A response that made sense.

“I don’t know. Suddenly it was everywhere?” Dean half said, half asked.

“And it could penetrate concrete walls,” said Cas. “How?”

“I don’t know!!!” Dean shouted, his voice quivering. “I don’t know. I just know that I’m blind and everyone else can see.”

“Three beings is a pretty small sample from which to draw such a conclusion. I may be wrong, but I think the Darkness envelopes your mind. Your imagination. Your intentions. If it senses fear or weakness, it enters.”

“So I’m blind because I’m scared and weak. Not because this was all my fault?” Dean sounded on the verge of tears.

“No, Dean,” Castiel said. “You have it backwards. Because you think this is all your fault, you are blind. Do you really think you could have caused something so powerful, so overwhelming, by yourself?”

“No,” Dean answered. “But you’re not blind. Sam’s not blind. I must have done something much worse to end up completely blind.”

“The worst you have done is believing you have done the worst. That is the equivalent of opening the doors to your mind and eyes, and calling the darkness “Come On In!!!’  Sam, do you feel responsible for this abomination?”

“Not entirely” Sam answered slowly. “I think I played a part in it, yeah, but we all did. You, me, Dean, Crowley, Rowena, and that 300-year old guy Oscar who Rowena loved. It wasn’t intentional, at least trying to call the Darkness wasn’t intentional. We were just trying to remove the Mark from Dean.” Sam stopped to think for a moment “Well, we were all trying to except for Dean. He was busy trying to get Death to kill him.”

“Exactly,” Castiel responded, his palms still covering Dean’s eyes.

“You planning on taking those sweaty hands off my face anytime soon? I’m getting really clammy.”

“I apologize,” said Castiel. “I can’t do that just yet. Soon.” He surprised everyone by giving Dean a light brush with his lips on his forehead. “I know this is difficult. But it is also necessary. So, Sam’s mentioned, what, six guilty parties. Good memory, Sam, but you’re wrong. There were six well-intentioned beings trying to rid Dean of the mark. But you left out someone who knew the consequences and did not want the mark removed.”

“Death?” said Dean, surprised. “So Death really wanted this to happen. How? Why?”

“You ask difficult questions, my friend. Death knew exactly what was happening, to the very last detail,” Castiel answered. “He wanted the darkness to come.”

“But why?” Dean asked, still bewildered.

“We’ll get to that. I told you, I have a guess but I’m not certain. I need to talk to my elders first, if I can. Tell me this, Dean. Do you still feel the darkness was all your fault? Do you feel it was primarily your fault? Do you feel personally responsible?”

“No,” Dean said ashamedly. “No, I guess not. That was kind of, oh shit, what’s the word, you? Like in ‘you’? More like Hugh-“

“Hubris,” Sam broke in. “It’s easy to see how you could fall into that trap, but that kind of power, bro, It’s just way beyond what anyone can do. It’s just too big for one person. Haven’t you been listening to Castiel?”

Dean was getting tired of being spoken to as if he were a young child who’d misbehaved. On the other hand, it made sense. Ever since Death had handed him his scythe, Dean felt as if he’d been acting in a poorly written play. The spurt of white light and shaking when the spell to remove the Mark finally worked. Dean saying he'd kill Sam and killing Death instead. Death holding his form for a moment, then disintegrating like a black sand castle. A lot of pretty trite scenes, he thought. He’d been terrified, terrified and 100% convinced this was the end. He was practically oozing fear and guilt. Castiel’s hands on his face was the only time he felt close to safe. He was a darkness magnet.

“You are not a magnet for the darkness,” Cas said. Dean didn’t bother to tell Cas to stop reading his mind. It was actually comforting. “How can I put this so you will understand? Fear. It’s the darkness that’s afraid, Dean. It’s terrified. It thought it had long been dispersed.  Death forced it to come out again. Originally, all it knew was itself. Now, it’s overwhelmed by so much light and activity, moon, suns, meteors, stars. planets. It doesn’t know these things and it is terrified. It seeks terror because it feels terror. It knows it doesn’t belong. It’s not very comforting, but absorbing light, any kind of light, makes it feel a little less frightened, a little less alone. I have no idea why Death would want this, but the Darkness he let out is frightened.”

“I think it has been absorbing your light through your eyes. Your sense of responsibility and shame feels like you drawn the darkness inside you. But that isn’t true. The primordial darkness knew only itself.  To summon it back into an entirely different universe is cruel. The darkness, literally, is more afraid of you than you are of it. Know this, and it will leave you. I’m going to remove my hands now. Know that you are stronger than the darkness. Know that you can see.”

Castiel removed his hands and Dean stood stock still, eyes wide open.

Castiel waited patiently. Sam tried to do the same but couldn’t. “So Can you see, Dean? What do see? Can you see at all? Can you hurry up and tell us? This is driving me crazy.”

Dean rubbed his eyes and opened them again. “I can see,” he said, more dumbfounded than relieved. “I can see everything. I can see how blue your eyes are, Cas. I can see the cracks in the peeling green linoleum floor from when I dropped the skillet cause I was burning my pancakes and I forgot to get a potholder. I can see how incredibly tall and lanky you are, Sam. I can even see the scars from one or two zit outbursts when you were a teenager. I can-

“That’s enough,” Sam said. “We’ve established that you can see. That’s great. You can even see colors.”

“Can you?” Dean asked.

“No, not yet,” Sam replied. “But I didn’t spend the last hour being healed by an angel.”

“I’m sorry; I haven’t got the time right now.”

“That’s ok, I can still see fine. But why? What happened to the darkness?“

“Nothing. You two. Stay in the bunker. I mean it. Do not set one foot outside. I healed you once, Dean. I don’t know if I can heal you again.”

Dean picked up a Wedgewood blue salt shaker, stared at it, and put it back on the table.

“Pay attention, Dean! This is important. Do you know why you can see?”

“Cause you healed me?”

“No. I didn’t. I helped you to heal yourself. Remember that,” Castiel had disappeared by the end of the sentence. Dean was still in shock.

A disembodied voice floated through the  kitchen. “And remember: do not leave the bunker, no matter what.”

Sam sighed. “sometimes I really wish we could just go home.”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “But this _is_ home. It’s just a totally different home from the one we grew  up in. Well, that I grew up in. You were just a baby when it burned down. You never had a real home.”

“I guess,” said Sam. “Did our house have a pool table?”

“What? No. We lived in a home, Sam, not a bar.”

“So I didn’t miss out on all that much. You wanna play some pool?”

Dean surprised them both by giving his brother a bear hug.  “I love you Sammy,” he said. “I love Cas and colors and Earth and the Universe; I love them all.”

Sam broke away from Dean’s arms. “Yeah, uh, that’s great, Dean. I’m real happy for you. Lets go shoot some pool.”


	3. Castiel's Dilemma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel goes to Heaven for advice about the darkness.
> 
> He has no success.
> 
> Castiel considers two alternate strategies, both of which are more dangerous and less likely to succeed than his pointless trip to Heaven.

Castiel returned to Heaven, his home town, so to speak. He cared about Earth more than most other angels, but Heaven was home. Heaven was where he had led garrisons in battle, stared down at the Earth at night, and generally felt most comfortable. At least it used to feel most comfortable. Now he spent most of his time on Earth, which, despite its never-ending curiosities, still didn’t feel like home. Earth was more interesting, but Heaven was where he came in times of great challenge. Of which there seemed to be significantly more since he rescued Dean Winchester from Hell. He wasn’t certain who that original order came from; it was delivered by a group of militant angels, but Castiel had always hoped his Father had made the initial inscrutable decision. He was still hurt that his Father hadn’t cared enough about the apocalypse to intervene. But his Father and the archangels had fought off and trapped the primordial darkness; Castiel hoped that He’d want to help now that the darkness had returned.

Except there was no visible darkness in Heaven. There should have been. The darkness should have covered everything. But Heaven looked the same as it ever had, to Castiel’s angel eyes. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe if he took Dean or Sam to Heaven, they’d be able to tell him about the darkness. Maybe if he took Dean to Heaven he would become blind forever.

This line of thought was not helpful nor was it the reason he had come. He used the angel wireless, as it were, to convene a conference of his elders. Or at least his equals. Castiel reserved calling upon specific angels for as yet unforeseen greater needs in the future, needs that were most suited to a particular angel. Perhaps that would have been more effective now.  His Father, of course, was nowhere to be seen. Michael and Lucifer were in their cage in Hell. Raphael was dead, and no one ever seemed to know about Gabriel. The summit had been a foolish idea. Castiel was left  as he’d begun; sitting alone at an absurdly long and empty conference table.

 When the call for his elders yielded no results, Castiel broadened his request to all angels. A rather motley and irritable crew straggled into the conference room. Most were annoyed at having been interrupted, and had little interest in Castiel’s concerns. The general consensus was that Earth had been intent on destroying itself for quite a while, and that climate change would make the planet uninhabitable relatively soon on its own. Angels tended toward a broader scope of the word “soon.” Castiel could not convince the others that the darkness was everywhere, not just Earth. No one believed him because they hadn't been around for the original darkness, and to their angel vision, nothing looked different. They thought it was a ploy of Castiel's to convince them to help Earth. The most animated discussion centered around whether their Father would return to create a new species when the time came. Almost all the angels welcomed the resurgence of the darkness, out of curiosity if nothing else. Those who didn’t were too preoccupied with more pressing concerns to care. Everyone was annoyed at wasting time on yet another of Castiel’s frivolous concerns about the Earth. Soon, Castiel was again left sitting alone at the absurdly long and empty table, no better off than he’d been when he had arrived and considerably more irritable.

Castiel couldn’t help overhearing mumbling complaints as the angels left. “Castiel and his Earth _again_?” and “Still Dean Winchester? After all this time?” and “How many times does that angel have to die before he finally shuts up?”

He dismissed the complaints and wondered how much damage the darkness might have already done to Heaven, since it could not be perceived by angels’ vision. He wondered whether the other angels would have been so nonchalant if they had been able to see the darkness, like Dean and Sam. Heaven had always struck him as too cloistered from life on Earth; perhaps this had been by intentional design.

The empty conference room began to grate on Castiel’s nerves. He remembered when he had sat at that table and planned military strategy in the war against Lucifer’s army. Now, he felt as if he could no longer breathe in that room of glorious and hateful memories. He used the angel exit to leave the oppressive hall of doors and stroll outside. He reveled in the heat of the sun on his body, the cooling wind in his hair, the magnificent personal Heavens humans had created. He was sorely tempted to lie down on the grass and surrender to “angel sleep,” essentially a coma of indeterminate time, similar to hibernation. But it appeared he was needed to dispel the darkness. Besides, angels needed at least one sleep mate, a fellow angel who could be told when to waken the hibernating angel. It was considered very bad form to wake a hibernating angel without permission, and this could damage the angel as well. They had to be brought back slowly, gradually, to full consciousness. Castiel had heard of at least one potentially apocryphal but also potentially true instance in which a hibernating angel had been woken too fast and lost his sanity.

Castiel chided himself for letting his mind wander. He needed to focus on the darkness. Especially since none of his brethren seemed to give a damn. _Assbutts_ , he thought bitterly, disgusted by his species.

There remained one entity who most certainly would be interested in the matter, although whether or not he could be persuaded to do anything about it remained to be seen. Castiel was loathe to summon an already annoyed Death and ask for help with exactly what Death had said would happen. Although he was by far the most knowledgeable source of information and advice, Castiel was not at all certain that Death would be any more willing to help than the angels had been. He would probably not be angry enough to use his scythe to remove Castiel’s head from his body, but it was a possibility. Ironically, although Death had the singe most predictable job in Creation, he tended to be very unpredictable on a personal basis.

Of course there remained one last option, which Castiel would very much rather avoid. He was not comfortable in situations he did not understand, and to go directly to the source of the problem would not be a simple task. The darkness was unaccustomed to anything other than itself. Castiel was uncertain if conversation was a concept it understood, or was even capable of. He felt torn between risking Death’s ire, and the unknown possibility or consequences of attempting to communicate directly with the darkness. If it came to that, convincing the darkness to leave would be a delicate and difficult if not impossible job.

Castiel wandered over to his favorite human’s Heaven; the brightly sparkling ever-changing world of the autistic painter’s garden. Usually being here brought peace and contemplation. Now, Castiel could not quiet his thoughts. _Should I stop worrying about the darkness, too?_ he asked himself. _Am I the only angel who gives a damn about Earth_? _Maybe I should give up too._ _Does it matter?_ he asked himself. _Yes_ , he admitted honestly, not from any particular strength of character but from angels’ inability to lie, to others or themselves _. Am I really concerned about the fate of the Earth, or the fate of Dean Winchester? And of course Sam, too,_ he added a bit guiltily _._ Again, he could only tell himself the truth, but it made no difference. He was certain he still needed to protect Earth.  How he would do so, however, remained a conundrum.


	4. Bonkers in the Bunker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Sam start to get bored under house arrest, as it were, by Castiel. Their laptops are no longer able to connect to the net, making matters worse.
> 
> They both have cabin fever.
> 
> Dean has the idea of making a simple eclipse viewer and using it with the outside door cracked open to view the darkness.
> 
> It works.

The first day wasn’t so bad. Dean and Sam were exhausted,  and fell into their beds with their clothes still on, most likely before the sun went down. Of course they couldn’t see sunset or anything else from inside the bunker. And the darkness had been subsuming the sunlight anyhow. Dean actually slept eight hours through; almost a miracle for him.

He wandered into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. He’d decided he would force himself to praise Sam’s cooking as if his brother were an Iron Chef and the bunker was a five-star restaurant. He’d do anything to keep an even keel. Turns out he didn’t have to force himself.

‘This is delicious, Sam,”  Dean said about the omelet Sam cooked. “I mean, really good. What’s in it?”

“Tons of eggs and cheese,” Sam replied. “I figured we might as well use up what’s in the fridge before it goes bad.” Dean helped himself to a slice of toast and literally slathered it with butter.  Butter dripped down his chin as he ate it. Sam gave him a look.

“What? You just said to eat before the food goes bad.”

“I don’t think the butter is going to go bad for a while,” Sam countered. “Besides which, It’s disgusting to see butter drip down your stubble. Sam himself was clean shaven. Dean shrugged his shoulders and kept eating till even he was full.

“You really are a good cook, Sam. But I don’t think the customers are going to notice whether or not you shave.”

“I notice it,” Sam responded, testily. “I like to be clean and shaven every now and then. It makes me feel better.”

“Ok, ok. You did a great job shaving. You didn’t miss anything and nothing’s bleeding. Although at some point you’re gonna have to learn to shave without shaving cream,” Dean taunted. He wanted to keep the peace, really he did. He just couldn’t help himself. “Have we taken stock yet?” he asked.

“Not really,” Sam replied. “It’s a good idea. I know what’s in the kitchen cupboards but that’s about it.  I haven’t checked the pantry for ages.” He got up, put his dishes in the sink, and checked out the pantry. It was a medium sized room with built-in shelves. The shelves were completely full. “Holy shit!” he said, impressed. “There’s enough canned food and toilet paper to last for a hundred years.”

“Thanks,” Dean said, heavy on the sarcasm. “I can celebrate  my 140th  birthday right here in the bunker. Any pie?”

“Pie needs to be refrigerated after a while, Dean.  No pie.”

“What about pie ingredients? Do we have those?”

“Dean, pie needs butter and eggs and a ton of perishables.  There _is_ some pie filling here. Everything’s canned. But it could still taste all right.”

“Eating pie filling from a can for my birthday. Yum.”

“It’s not like I haven’t seen you eat from a can a million times before,” countered Sam.

“Yeah,” Dean answered, running his finger around his plate and licking it. “But that was by choice. Totally different thing. Hey, you must have missed your morning run. That sucks.”

“It does,” Sam replied. “Speed walking around the bunker and up and down the stairs isn’t a whole lot of fun. But I could see outside from the attic window. It was -“

“You could?! Really?? And it didn’t make you blind or anything?” Dean was amazed. “Maybe Castiel’s killed the darkness already.”

“Don’t get your hopes up, bro. I think the only reason I could look through the window is that Cas put up a major protection shield on the bunker. I think that’s why he was so insistent we stay in the bunker.”

“Makes sense,” said Dean. “What did you see  out there? Should I go up and look?”

“You can if you want, but you’re gonna be pretty disappointed. I cleaned the inside of the window, but I wasn’t sure I should open it, so I left it closed. The outside is so filthy you can barely see anything. Though I did make out the shape of that huge old elm. It’s still standing. And again, everything seemed greyish. I felt like I was looking at the greyness, not the darkness.”

“Oh,” said Dean, downcast. “Guess I’ll clean up breakfast. What’re you gonna do?”

“I thought I’d go to the library and look at the news on my laptop.”

“Good plan. I’ll meet you there when I’m done.”

Sometimes the brothers left used dishes out for days, if they had to leave on a hunt right away. And sometimes they left uses dishes out for days when they were just feeling lazy. Dean figured they were gonna be there a while; they’d better not let the kitchen turn into a moldy mess of old food and drink. The image brought back a sudden memory from before his old house had burned down. A 100% red white and blue American memory. He’d followed his four-year-old nose into the kitchen, where his mom had just finished putting up the last tray of toll house cookies to bake. She’d already cleaned just about all of the utensils she’d used to make them, as well as the table and the sink. _How can a kitchen look so clean right after mom baked toll house cookies_ he asked himself. His mom’s kitchen was always spotless. All that remained to be cleaned was the mixing bowl. He grabbed it and ran his finger around the inside. He ate at least two cookies worth of batter from licking his finger _. “Thanks, honey. You rinsed the bowl for me,”_ his mom had sad, smiling.  


Dean’s gut actually wrenched from the memory. He barely remembered his mother or his home, but the image was crystal clear. He had to sit down at the table and hold his head to keep from crying. _How did I get into this stupid fucking life anyhow_ he asked himself. _Carrying on the “family business.” When angels order hits on angels and demons are sometimes actually helpful, the whole family business seems less important. Besides, if he and Sam spent the rest of their lives hunting, there would still be monsters and dangers after they were dead._

Dean got up, finished the dishes, wrung out the sponge and set it vertically leaning on the wall to dry. He washed his hands on an old dish rag and hung it up neatly. _Hope Sam doesn’t get a heart attack when he sees this,”_ he thought.

Dean joined him in the library. Rather than his usual position of hunching over a book or a laptop, Sam had crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his chair against the wall so he could put his feet up on the table. He looked as if he were about to throw up.

“What’s going on here?” Dean asked. “You look sick. You feeling ok?”

“Take a look,” Sam said as he pointed to the laptop. It was showing what seemed to be old-fashioned static, from the antenna television days.

“That’s weird,” said Dean, moving closer for a better luck. “Try my old laptop,” he said.

“This _is_ your old laptop, said Sam. “First thing I tried when all I could get on mine was static.”

“Huh. Maybe the darkness fucked up the cable,” Dean said.

“Ya think?” Sam sneered.  “Look,” he said. He clicked from tab to tab. Mostly static, but occasionally he’d find a site like the Home Shopping Network and a really annoying children’s show about a purple dinosaur.

“Can you get Sesame Street?”

“What??!!! You actually want to watch Sesame Street? Now?” Sam snapped.

“I was wondering if the darkness was selective. It seems to only show junk.”

Sam googled Sesame Street, and found the station.

Dean watched with what seemed like ridiculous interest. Sam was still lying back in his chair, but he could see most of the screen. Dean saw some kid hanging out with Big Bird and Snuffel something or other. As they watched, black smoke entered the studio and gradually covered Big Bird, the Snuffle thing, and the rest of Sesame Street, like it had done to the Impala. Then the computer changed over to the same static Dean had seen when he walked in. He looked totally confused.

“Doesn’t seem to have an agenda, does it?” Dean asked. _Poor Big Bird and his Snuffley friend_ , _Dean thought. He actually choked up a bit. Another memory he’d totally forgotten momentarily replaced the static and the bunker with four-year-old Dean, sitting cross-legged on the floor, eating popcorn and watching Sesame Street. Sammy was in a playpen, watching too. What the fuck is the matter with me today he thought as he blew his nose loudly into a tissue._

“Getting a cold?” Sam asked pointedly.

“No, it’s just dusty up here.” Dean suddenly sneezed, adding credibility to his lie.

“So, no. The answer to your question is no. Not selective. But every time I start to watch something, it gets eaten by the dark and goes static. I think by watching for a few minutes, I alert the darkness and it comes and eats the show.”

“Why doesn’t it see us watching and eat us, too?” Dean asked.

“Because, Dean, we’re not being broadcast,” Sam said as he shook his head.

“What about the books?” Dean asked. “Find anything?”

“Nothing remotely related to the darkness. I gotta get this shit outta my head for a while. Wanna play some pool?”

“When do I ever say no?”

The day began to drag. Neither of them played particularly well, and Dean actually knocked a ball off the table. He yawned. “Gonna get some more coffee.”

“Good idea,” said Sam. “I’ll come with.”

Dean reheated the leftover coffee and filled two cups. He set them on the table and got the milk out for Sam.

Dean took a slug, made a face, and kept drinking. “Worse than Dunkin Donuts.”

“Reheated coffee always tastes like – blechhh!” Sam shouted as he spit out his mouthful of coffee. “Rotten milk,” he said by way of explanation.

“Already?” Dean asked. “You drank it for breakfast today.”

“We’re gonna be eating a lot of fresh food for the next couple of days,” Sam said. “Or not,” he added, as he bit into an apple and spat it out. “I didn’t know that apples could get so shmushy and disgusting. It’s like eating oatmeal. I mean yeah, they get soft spots and get old, but the worst that happens if you eat around the bad parts is that the apple tastes bad. This one was toxic.”

“Dean, where’d you go? The big bad apple scare you away?”

“Nope,” Dean answered, coming in from the pantry with a bottle of whiskey. He took a slug from the bottle. “Not bad,” he said. “Who’d’a thought the military would stockpile decent whiskey?” He took another slug.

“I gather there’s more in the pantry,” said Sam.

“Enough to keep a crapload of militia happy for a long time,” Dean replied. He got a clean glass and poured an inch or so of whisky. “Here,” he said, giving the glass to Sam. “It’s really actually pretty good”

“If you like whisky,” said Sam, leaving the glass untouched. He opened the fridge and took out a beer. He drank it slowly, as usual. “Any beer back there?” he asked.

“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. There’s a ton. Guess I’ll put some more in the fridge,” he said as he walked into the pantry and returned with a six-pack in each hand. “Good to know we won’t run out of the essentials,” he told Sam.

Sam gave Dean an inscrutable look, then went back to sipping his beer. Dean drank the inch of whisky he’d offered to Sam, then poured himself half a glass. He used the Disney Little Mermaid glass he’d gotten free at a gas station. It held about 12 ounces of liquid, so half a glass was quite a lot. It didn’t seem to bother Dean. He loved that glass. He used it whenever they were in the bunker.

Suddenly Dean looked like he was dancing in an old-fashioned musical. He’d slipped on a wet patch of water by the sink, no doubt water he’d spilled washing the breakfast dishes and forgot to clean up. The glass of whisky spilled on his shirt front as it continued its trip through gravity and fell on the linoleum floor. It shattered into a million tiny pieces mixed with whiskey. _That’s gonna be a bitch to clean up,_ he thought

Dean sat down at the table for the second time that day with his head in his hands. Sam got a couple of cold beers, took the tops off, and set them in front of his brother. Dean looked up at his Sam’s face and said “Thanks, man” before drinking half a beer in one gulp.

Sam got up and went into the pantry, returning with a bottle of whiskey, which he also set in front of his brother.

“Hey, thanks. Really. What’s with all the nice all of a sudden?”

“You looked so devastated. I know how much you loved that glass. I don’t know. Maybe the world looks sadder in black and white.”

“I bet you’d have seen the same thing even if you could see colors. The darkness actually hurt my eyes,” he said, starting to clean up the spill.

“Interesting,” Sam replied. “It didn’t hurt my eyes at all. Maybe the darkness doesn’t notice black and white.”

“Could be,” Dean replied with a huge yawn. “Think I’m gonna take a nap.”

“Good idea,” Sam agreed.  “I’m going to see what I can find in the library.”

Dean nodded and headed off for his bedroom. Sam took a gulp of luke-warm coffee without milk. He thought how tiny and absurd his feelings were compared to the darkness.

__________

A week later the brothers were suffering from bunker fever. They’d watched all the DVDs at least once, sometimes twice. Dean kept picking up paperback novels, reading for ten or fifteen minutes, then losing interest and trying another book. Same was still looking through the ancient books, trying and failing to find anything about how to deal with the return of the darkness. He supposed it was such an inconceivably stupid thing to do, no one had even considered it. He missed access to the net. Having no connection to the outside worlds was hampering his research a bit. Finally he closed the book he was reading and announced he was going for a walk.

“You’re leaving the bunker?!” Dean exclaimed. “Cas specifically told us not to leave the bunker!”

“I know, Dean,” Sam said in an exasperated tone of voice. The two were beginning to take out their boredom on each other. “I meant, I’m going to do my speed walk through the bunker and the indoor stairs. Like I do every day,” he grunted.

“Yeah, right, sure. Have a nice walk.”

A few minutes later Dean could hear Sam’s feet clunking on the concrete floor. He was singing along, out of tune, with the song on his iPod.  He actually sounded pretty funny.  Sam sang one horrible falsetto bridge, and Dean couldn’t help laughing. At first the laughter felt cleansing. But he couldn’t stop. Every time he tried, he’d end up snorting beer out his nose and making a pretty awful sound himself. The snorts would set him off, laughing till it was literally hard to breathe.  After a while he got it under control, and played the games that came on his laptop or tried another book. But his mind kept returning to Sam’s falsetto, and he’d have another attack of laughter. He really did have trouble breathing. _I’m going bonkers, he thought. Bonkers in the bunker,_ which set off a new laughing fit. He started dancing around the room, singing “Bonkers in the Bunker” to the tune of  “Bungle in the Jungle.” He sang:

“Going bonkers, in the bunker, that ain’t right by me

I’m a hunter under house arrest

And man do I disagree.”

“That wasn’t half bad,” said Sam, startling Dean, who now felt more than a little bit silly. “Bonkers in the Bunker. I like it. Wanna sing it again with me, in harmony?”

Dean snorted and just managed to hold in the laughter. For a minute. Then he was guffawing and gasping for breath as the laughter kept returning. Of course it was contagious. Sam started laughing too, quickly proceeding from quiet laughter to great snorts that made snot come out of his nose. When Dean saw the snot, he laughed so hard he had to sit down.

Eventually the hysterical laughter attack ended. The brothers sprawled out on the big comfy couch in the library, the blue one with rips that were leaking couch material. The laughter had been cleansing at first, but by now that the adrenaline had passed they were both just tired and depressed. They’d been eating canned food for a few days after everything in the fridge mysteriously spoiled all at once. When Sam had started to drag a bagful up the stairs for compost, Dean yelled at the top of his lungs “Stop! You planning on leaving the garbage on the stairs? Cause no way are you leaving this bunker, dude.”

Sam sighed and carried the Hefty bag to a pile of them that had built up in one of the bedrooms. The room was starting to smell pretty funky, but what else could they do, if they couldn’t leave the bunker. Sam hummed Bungle in the Jungle under his breath as he dragged the bag to the noxious room and came back to the kitchen.

Dean was sitting at the table drinking whiskey from a teacup. He’d gotten a bit lax about his clean kitchen protocol, and all the glasses were dirty. He looked pretty disgruntled and found no humor in the situation whatsoever.

“Hey, dude. Think I should call Cas and find out what’s happening in the real world?” he asked Sam.

“No,” Sam answered definitively. “I’m sure he’s incredibly busy right now doing something stupid that never seems like it will work but it does. He’ll call when he’s ready to talk.”

“I guess,” said Dean. His mood had changed miraculously quickly from hysterical to morose. “Doesn’t really matter, anyhow. He’d just be annoyed and tell us to stay in the bunker. Not even one little peek. I wonder if we could build something like an eclipse viewer box, where we stay in the bunker with our backs to the door, and look through a pinhole. It’ll work even better with aluminum foil. I’m sure there’s plenty in the pantry. And there’s got to be some white paper around here we can use as a screen.”

“Hey, that’s actually a pretty good idea, dude. I’m impressed. If we make one of those and stand on the stairs, our backs to the door, which we’ll only open as much as we need to see, it just might work. I’m surprised I didn’t think of it. Typical. I get engrossed in ancient books, looking for archaic clues, and you come up with a really simple but brilliant idea.”

“Maybe we’re turning into each other,” Dean said, “stuck together inside like this,”

Sam laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Dean had a sudden uncontrollable need to say “Bitch.”

Sam came right back with “Jerk.”

 _Maybe we can get through this_ , Dean thought.

“You should make the viewer box, Dean. I’m lousy at that kind of stuff.”

“I know,” Dean answered, rather undiplomatically. “I mean, I really enjoy making things and fixing things, and I think you’d find a pre-school science project pretty boring.” _And I’ll do a much better job of it, too, Dean thought._   “Actually the teacher made them for us, but I’m sure I’ll do fine without Mrs. Hamburger.” Both brothers couldn’t stop from snorting a little bit at the reference to Mrs. Hamburger. When they were kids, of course they thought this was the most hilarious name in the world. “You wanna, like, look around to see if this is a good idea?”

“I don’t think any of these ancient books are going to have much in the way of eclipse viewing boxes. I could find out exactly how to do it safely on the net, but…”

“I’m gonna get started on it now,” Dean said. “I remember watching Mrs. Hamburger make one cause she forgot to make one for herself, and it looked really easy. We just need a box and some aluminum foil and white paper. The box should be easy, and I’m sure that there’s aluminum foil in the pantry. The hardest part, really, will be finding a clean white piece of paper for the viewing screen.”

Sam opened a drawer in the desk and said “Voila! Clean white paper. I was looking for some paper to take notes on and I found this. I think I saw some shoeboxes in the attic. Would that work?”

“Pretty much,” said Dean. “Unless we want to make one big enough to wear like a hat.”

“I think the kind without the hat should be fine,” Sam said, grinning at the thought of them putting boxes on their heads. “I’ll go get some aluminum foil, we’ve got a ream of white paper, and maybe you could look around in the attic for a box. Worst case, we take a box from the pantry and put whatever was in it on the shelf.”

Dean could hear the excitement in Sam’s voice. He was excited himself, except he wasn’t really sure this would work. _There’s no eclipse to focus on, he thought, and he had no idea how the device would work for looking at darkness. Better than staying in here going bonkers, he thought._

The attic proved to be a treasure trove of boxes. Dean could have made two viewers, one for each of them, but then they’d have to open the door wider and it was safer just to take turns. He found a box he liked, and stopped at the library to get a couple pieces of white paper. Dean rummaged around in the desk draws found a tiny paperclip that would probably work. He was really excited by the time he met Sammy in the kitchen. Sam had an assortment of various thickness of aluminum foil, which he’d arranged neatly from thinnest to thickest. He’d also found a pair of scissors in with the knives.

Dean put the box on the table, and put the white paper in the dish rag drawer to keep it clean. He stood thinking for a good minute or two, then sat down and began to use his pocket knife to cut a window in the box. “Shit! I forgot we need duct tape. Any ideas where I could find some?” he asked Sam. Sam remembered seeing some in the attic. He ran upstairs to get the duct tape while Dean slowly and methodically began to do what he could without the tape. When Sam showed up with a large roll, Dean practically grabbed it from him and got to work cutting a piece of the heaviest aluminum foil. He used the duct tape to carefully attach the foil to the box, pulling the foil tight so it didn’t wrinkle. He carefully taped one of the pieces of white paper to the back of the box, opposite the foil. Dean tested the unbent paper clip on a piece of leftover aluminum foil. It wasn’t nearly sharp enough; he needed a needle or thumbtack to carefully punch a tiny hole in the foil. He looked around the kitchen; nothing. Nothing in the pantry, either. Sam  disappeared to the library, and came back holding what looked like a small metal toothpick.

“What _is_ that?” Dean asked. “It looks like a metal toothpick.”

“I don’t know,” Sam answered. “Maybe that’s what it is. A metal toothpick.” He put it down on the table and wiped his hands on his jeans thinking about previous uses of the toothpick. “I think it will work perfectly.”

Dean took the toothpick, used a knife to measure the center of the foil, and poked a tiny hole. Perfect.

“So, we ready to give this thing a try?” he asked. He wondered why he wasn’t afraid; the darkness is so different from an eclipse.

“Ready and waiting, captain,” said Sam.

“Ok then. Let’s check her out.”

The brothers walked down the stairs to the door to the outside. Dean unlocked the door but didn’t open it. Suddenly “what if it doesn’t work” took on another dimension. Dean worried silently _what if it does work and I go blind again?_   Well, he wasn’t about to chicken out now. “You wanna go first, or should I?”

“I think it makes sense for me to go first,” said Sam. “I could always see a little bit, enough to drive us home. And it will be in black and white anyhow.”

Dean couldn’t imagine what difference it would make that Sam saw in black and white, but he humored his brother.

“So how do we do this?” asked Sam. “When is it safe to open the door?”

Dean helped align the box for Sam. They both stood with their backs to the door, and Dean reached back and opened it just a crack; just the size of the viewer. “Ok, dude. It’s time.”

Sam moved so his back was pressed against the slightly opened door. He fiddled with the box, unconsciously opening the door a bit more so he could see. He held the box up and looked. What a let-down. All he saw was the same grey he’d seen before. “Well, it works,” he said to Dean, “but all I see is more or less the same that I saw driving us back here.”

“Good,” said Dean. “You’d better stop now; I think you’ve been looking long enough.” Sam couldn’t really understand, since nothing had changed for him, why he couldn’t just walk outside. But he didn’t. He pulled the door almost shut behind him and gave the viewer to Dean.

“Ok,” said Sam. “Just position it right inside, and then very slowly back your way out till you see something on the paper.” He opened the heavy metal door slightly and Dean carefully repeated the same steps his brother had taken. He couldn’t help shutting his eyes while he leaned back against the door and held the box steady.

Dean didn’t like to admit he was afraid of anything. Nor did he want to humiliate himself by changing his mind at the last minute. But it wasn’t apprehension he felt when he got ready to open his eyes and look. It was terror. Never being one to give into fear, Dean opened his eyes and looked through the little pinhole in the box. At first he couldn’t see anything, just darkness. Well, that was pretty much what he had expected. He rotated slightly to get a different view of the darkness, and suddenly he dropped the viewer and shrieked.


	5. Death Games

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel summons Death and tries to convince him to help return the darkness to its rightful place.
> 
> Castiel spends the night at the Bunker. He sees what caused Dean to shriek while looking at the darkness.
> 
> Unfortunately, the darkness is strong and he cannot heal Dean. He can offer only warmth and comfort to the brothers.
> 
> There is only one method left to fight the darkness, a method Castiel must use soon and one that he would rather not even think about.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Death said, taking in the large green meadow that showed no sign whatever of the darkness. Before him was a wicker picnic basket. “You summoned me to share a picnic lunch in a meadow? You well know neither of us has need of sustenance. I have a very busy schedule.”

“I realize that. But the matter I need to discuss is of pressing urgency.” Castiel diplomatically responded to Death’s concerns. “As for the meadow, I felt it wise to create a space where we could not be bothered,” Cas replied as if he were waiting to be reprimanded. “Dean Winchester told me you have a sophisticated palette for human food. I wasn’t sure what you preferred, so I’ve prepared a Potpourri,” Castiel continued humbly.

“Excuse me. A poh poury?” asked Death in an irritated tone of voice. Castiel was not certain if possessed any other tone of voice.

“I’m so sorry,” Castiel kow-towed, barely hiding his frustration. “A Potpourri. It’s pronounced poh-pour-ee. It’s a French term that means a wide variety to choose from.”

“So I see,” said Death, warming up a bit to the topic. “So I see. And this?”  he asked, popping a pepper in his mouth. “This is quite tasty. A bit tangy, as well. Very good.”

“That was a Carolina Reaper.” Castiel couldn’t help a small smile. “Apt that you would enjoy it,” he said. Death’s mouth moved slightly upwards at the corners in what could possibly be construed as a grin.

“The Carolina Reaper is officially the Earth’s Hottest Pepper, according to the human anthology “The Guinness Book of World Records.” What you no doubt tasted is the pepper’s combination of extreme heat and excellent flavour.”

“Doubtless,” said Death. “I shall have to remember this. The Carolina Reaper.” Death’s mouth resumed its rather horrid smile.

“I could get you another in less than a moment,” said Castiel, thinking that there were something else he would much rather deliver to Death.

“Please do not,” Death responded. “I have never understood the human desire to ruin an excellent flavour by becoming over-satiated. Perhaps it is because they were created with such vicarious appetites.”

“No doubt,” agreed Castiel, as he indulged in a brief fantasy of bathing Death in Carolina Reaper juice.

“Like you,” said Death, “I have no need to bathe. Your fantasy is ignorant as well as insulting.”

_This is getting off to a stupendous start, Castiel thought. I’ve not even mentioned why I’m here and already managed to severely irritate Death._

“I am not as easily offended as you think, my young seraph. I have found this entire exchange much more amusing that annoying.”

When Castiel had been human, he had spent an inordinate amount of free time watching television. An image of an angry cartoon character, steam pouring out his ears, came to mind. Death snorted.

“If you prefer reading my mind,” Castiel said sweetly, “I will be happy to sit here and think everything I had been planning to say to you.”

“Please forgive my lapse of manners,” Death answered, in a tone that conveyed the opposite message of his words. “I so seldom have the opportunity to indulge in live company.”

“Then I am delighted to have supplied you with both,” Castiel snapped. He stopped, and took a deep breath.

“I need your help undoing the return of the darkness,” he said plainly.

“I think not,” murmured Death. “Why would you expect me to do such a thing?”

Even though he was probably speaking to one of the oldest creatures on Earth, Castiel could not shed the feeling that he was addressing a three-year-old. “Humans find the darkness dangerous and, uh, inconvenient, and I am distressed that it is destroying the Earth, as well.”

“It is destroying the entire universe,” Death said.

“Not my responsibility.” Castiel was finding himself closer and closer to smacking Death in his absurdly long narrow nose.

“I appreciate that you do not blame the darkness,” Death responded.

“Why would I do that?” asked Castiel. “It’s merely a construct made real, like this meadow. Neither good not bad.”

“I would not use the word construct,” Death sneered.

“I don’t give an assbutt whether it’s a construct or a Carolina Reaper!” shouted Castiel, losing his personal war with serenity. “It’s eating my favourite planet and terrifying my friends. You know as well as I do why the darkness has been released, and that it doesn’t belong. Are you going to help me or not?” Castiel yelled. His deep raspy voice sounded like thunder.

“Assbutt,” repeated Death, with one of his ghastly attempts at a grin. “That’s twice today I’ve encountered new words.”

“And you will encounter another one right now if you don’t start taking this conversation more seriously!” Castiel pounded his fist on the table, which he had forgotten was a soft meadow, and not particularly satisfying to pound.

“Castiel, Castiel. Your youth betrays you. I have been taking this conversation quite seriously from the start.” Death shook his head in a reproving manner. “You knew my answer before you summoned me.”

“I was hoping to change your mind,” spat Castiel. This was not going well. Not at all.

“With rudeness and hot peppers?” Death responded icily. “I think not. You are more responsible than most for the unnecessary return of the darkness. I’m of a mind to remind you of your manners.”

“Then do it!” Castiel cried, standing up and looking down on Death and the picnic basket, with a sour taste in his mouth. “For my Father’s sake, if no one else’s. I am royally sick of  grovelling at the feet of an ancient entity who has already been forced to dissipate once,” yelled Castiel. “Either do as I ask, or leave!”

Death actually guffawed. “Dissipate once?” he repeated, pausing to cackle again. “Do you really think Dean Winchester was the first to think that he bested me in battle?” Death stared gleefully at Castiel. “All of you, all your Father’s creations, you never cease to amaze me with your idiocy.”

Death crumbled into black ash as he had when Dean had sliced off his head with Death’s scythe. A moment later, Death reassembled, looking exactly the same as always, staring angrily at Castiel.

“At least your precious Dean Winchester took the time to cook a burrito for me.”  


“And I spent weeks looking for that fucking hot pepper.” Castiel stopped himself, amazed at his use of profanity. He couldn’t remember ever having done so before.

“Since you ask me so delicately,” Death said, with a semblance of a smile, “My answer is still no. I will not help you do anything further to harm my darkness.”

“ _Your darkness?!_ ” hissed Castiel. “Since when has Death ever owned anything, other than the right to ferry souls to their final resting place? You told Dean you existed before the darkness. Are you telling me you created it  yourself, as a plaything, to keep you occupied? And where did you get the ridiculous idea that I want to harm the darkness”? I don’t give a shit about the darkness one way or another. I just want to return it to it where it has peacefully existed for millennia!”

“ _LEAVE,_ ” Death snarled, staring Castiel in the face.

To his great frustration, Castiel found himself on Earth, his meadow and picnic basket vanished.

“FUCK YOU, DEATH!” he shouted, certain that he was out of Death’s earshot.

Instead, he heard distantly but distinctively “if only you could,” followed by Death’s hideous laughter.

As the sound faded, Castiel could hear it bouncing off a wall, far less grating. He looked around and saw he was at the Winchester bunker. The view was colourless. It was late autumn; shrivelled brown leaves covered the ground and the stairs leading down to the bunker. Neither Dean nor Sam was visible, but Castiel knew they were there all the same.

Castiel ran down the stairs and pounded on the door. “Open up, you assbutts,” he shouted. “And keep your fucking eyes closed this time.” He kicked the door open and fully extended his wings, which barely fit in the kitchen. Sam and Dean stared at him with the same opened mouth reaction they had had years ago when Castiel first pulled Dean out of Hell.

“Close your foolish mouths. I am still Castiel, I am still an angel of the Lord, and I can throw you both into the darkness with a flick of my fingers,” he said in a deep, dark tone of voice the brothers had heard only once before. Castiel knew he was taking out his anger at Death on the Winchesters, but he couldn’t stop. He snapped his fingers and the kitchen table and chairs disappeared. Dean shrieked in terror. Castiel kicked the door shut behind him and sat on the floor, blocking the door.

Castiel opened his eyes and stared straight at Dean and Sam, exposing the blue that was so often hidden by a squint. “I apologize. You have done nothing to earn my ire. I have just spent the last half hour with Death, not the most pleasant of conversationalists at the best of times. This was not the best of times. He refuses to help with the darkness.”

“What is wrong with Dean?” Castiel asked Sam. Dean was still shrieking, just more quietly.

“It’s my fault. We made eclipse viewers to safely look at the darkness. It worked for me. The box showed what I’d seen since the beginning. I don’t know what Dean saw. When it was his turn to look, he shrieked, and hasn’t really stopped since. Sometimes he’s quieter, like now. Sometimes it’s more of a slow moan.

“I’m so sorry,  Cas. I went first, to make sure it was safe. Safe. I knew better. Nothing is safe, and you warned us to stay inside the bunker. Using those eclipse viewers was just like nap time in Kindergarten. We were supposed to keep our eyes closed, but couldn’t help opening them bit by bit till the teacher caught us. For Dean, that’s sort of a genetic personality trait, but I should have known better.”

Castiel’s eye’s seemed to look straight through Sam’s until the guilt abated and he felt peace.

“Thanks, Cas,” he muttered in embarrassment.

“You did nothing to feel ashamed of, Sam. You are not your brother’s keeper. But I am worried about Dean. How long has he been like this?”

“It seems like forever. Let’s see. We used the eclipse viewers, ah, two days ago. Dean hasn’t said a word since. Sometimes he stops shrieking, and just moans, but” Sam’s voice trailed off.

Castiel nodded. “What is it, Dean? Can you still see?” he asked in a soft tone of voice, that somehow carried across the room to Dean. “You aren’t as protected as Sam.”

Dean whispered “Yes. I can see.”

“Good,” said Castiel. “I was worried you’d been exposed to more darkness than you could survive. What’s wrong?” he asked quietly. Dean swayed from one foot to the other, mute.

“I’m sorry I scared you, Dean. It’s only me, Cas,” Castiel said softly, his wings no longer in evidence. Dean continued to shake. “There’s no need to be afraid of me,” Castiel said. “Come.” Castiel held his arms open, looking Dean in the eye. Dean ran over and sat heavily on the floor, leaning his face into Castiel’s shoulder and heaving uncontrollably.  Cas held Dean close for a minute or two, then pushed him back a bit and placed his hands on Dean’s shoulders, which were still shaking. “What is it, Dean?” asked Castiel, staring into Dean’s green eyes. “Tell me,’ Castiel whispered. “It’s safe. I promise you. You are safe now,” Castiel finished, still staring straight into Dean’s eyes.

“The bats,” Dean muttered, grabbing onto Cas again. “The bats, the bats,” he whispered over and over into Castiel’s shoulder, unaware that he was repeating himself. Castiel let himself see through Dean’s eyes. There were indeed bats, the size of huge eagles, looming black and menacing.  Sharp canines almost a foot long extended from their mouths. Uncountable creatures, all heading straight for Dean.

Castiel could not banish the bat creatures from Dean’s memory, they were too old and their hold was too strong. All he could offer was physical comfort. He took a deep breath as his wings re-appeared. They looked soft and inviting this time, not a trace of threat. He wrapped his wings around Dean and gently kissed his forehead, He could hear the refrain still in Dean’s head: the bats, the bats, the bats. Castiel pulled Dean tight, reached up and ran his fingers through Dean’s hair. It was so short it felt like a brush, but a very soft brush.

“Did you banish the darkness?” asked Sam, also sitting  on the floor as  there were no chairs.

“No,” Castiel responded quietly. Dean began moaning. Castiel held him tighter with his arms, and closed his wings more closely around him.

“Oh, here,” Castiel said, almost as an afterthought. He snapped his fingers and the kitchen furniture reappeared. The burn and scratch marks were gone, and the table no longer wobbled.

“Thanks,” said Sam, quietly. “Was it because Death wouldn’t help?” he asked.

Castiel nodded, and beckoned Sam to come closer. Sam leaned half against his brother and half against Castiel, who opened a wing to cover both Sam and Dean. They spent the night that way, Sam and Dean leaning against Castiel’s warm body, held by his soft wings, sitting on the cold concrete steps. The Winchesters soon fell asleep. Castiel protected their dreams as best he could, and tried not to think about the next and last way he knew of trying to fight the darkness. Once more he wished for mortal sleep.

Instead, after totally clearing his head of thought, he sat and listened to the Winchesters breathing. They moved in their sleep, and Castiel made sure to catch them. Despite having already protected their dreams, he periodically made sure to check in to ward off any nightmares. He wondered what a nightmare felt like. He wondered if it was anything like his visit with Death. Or his time spent in Purgatory. Or a little slice of Hell.


	6. Of the Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel goes to Heaven to contemplate strategy. He is not looking forward to the ordeal.
> 
> When he cannot procrastinate anymore, he rises into the darkness.
> 
> The experience is not at all what Castiel expected. He visits with an old friend, makes a new friend, and succeeds in trapping the darkness, this time with a lock but no key.
> 
> He returns to the bunker, and all is good. Better than good.

Castiel gently laid each brother in his own bed, taking care not to wake them. He said goodnight to Sam first, with a kiss on the forehead. Castiel next looked in on Dean. He looked so peaceful and young, like a child who had cried himself to sleep. “No more bats,” Castiel whispered in a tone of voice too quiet for humans to hear. _If only I could have spared him that glimpse._ Castiel gave Dean a kiss on the forehead, too. Then another. Then he forced himself to leave.

Castiel disappeared before either brother woke up. He found himself in Heaven, sitting under the Abandoned Pagoda, a strange tree formation where he often went to think. _Enough procrastinating, he told himself. But how to talk to the darkness? Someplace quiet, alone, hidden. Not too far away. In the Solar System, for sure._ Cas was of such a torn heart, he was stuck.  He quieted his mind, drifting toward wherever he needed to be.

He ended up on the far side of the sun. It was dark. It shouldn’t be. _Good, Castiel thought. For the first time, I can see the darkness, too._ Castiel let go of an awful thought, a humiliating thought, a child’s thought. _If I can’t see the darkness, it can’t be real._ Castiel knew that was ridiculous. He knew the darkness was there. Everywhere. Whether he could see or not. Death did not once deny it, and Death did not suffer fools. Though Castiel was no fool. He just didn’t realize it.

Castiel’s incorporeal form assumed the mental equivalent of holding his head in his hands. He remained still for minutes or hours, days or weeks, feeling the darkness, letting it pass over and through him. The darkness had sensation. In the past, the dark of outer space had been cold, cold and indifferent. The darkness was not. It was warm, for one thing, like a throw made of furs. _That’s odd, Cas thought. He knew the darkness had preceded the Sun, so it could not have been warm. But that had been the original darkness._ This darkness had suddenly been relocated, and the warmth from the back of the sun might well have caused changes in temperature. Castiel very much wanted to speak to the darkness, but it had been long gone before Enochian appeared. He sat for a long while, musing on how to speak with an ineffable entity.

After a very long time, Castiel felt a strange sound? Sensation? He couldn’t say, other than that it came from within his head. It progressed slowly, as it took on a form Castiel could understand. Gradually, Castiel could make out speech, but the language was unfamiliar. When he stopped trying to listen, he could hear a song. A very sad song.

I am,  
I am,  
So very long ago  
I am the Darkness  
I am the First

But I was trapped  
Forever  
Where am I?

I am not whole  
I am undone  
I covered the nothingness  
Now there is so much to cover

I do not know who I am  
I co-exist  
The darkness is not made to co-exist  
I am The Nothing

Castiel found the song beautiful, even though he couldn’t understand the words. A long silence followed. Castiel wanted to be sure the darkness was finished. It didn’t sound like a formidable enemy. It sounded afraid and confused. He didn’t want to interrupt. Eventually he ventured

“Hello?”

“Hello?”

“Do you speak Enochian?” Castiel asked.

“Do you speak Enochian?”

“Yes,” Castiel answered. “I speak Enochian. I am speaking Enochian now.”

“Then I speak Enochian too,” answered the darkness, impossibly, from everywhere. “You taught me. What are you?”

“I am Castiel, an angel of the Lord,” Castiel answered.

“I may have known the Lord but I’ve forgotten. So long ago.”

Castiel wasn’t certain how to talk to the darkness. He opted for simple, because explaining to the darkness was difficult and annoying.

“You are here because someone mistakenly let you out.”

“Too much. Simpler.”

“Accident. You were trapped and let out,” said Castiel.

“Trapped?”

“Yes, trapped. You could not get out for a long time. Then you were let out by mistake,”  Castiel replied.

One of the huge black fanged bats flew by Castiel, very close.

“What?” asked the darkness.

Castiel was confused. Surely the darkness knew itself.

“What flew by me?” Castiel asked.

“Yes. Not. Here. Gone.”

“That was a creature of the darkness. Long black body. Long black wings. Long yellow fangs. It is one of yours,” Castiel said. “A kind of bat. You show know it.”

“Yes, many. Outside. In trap. Now.”

“You mean these creatures have followed you,” Castiel guessed.

“They frighten me.”

“They frighten _you?_ But they belong to you. They are creatures of the darkness.” Castiel was beginning to become impatient.

“Not mine. Happened. They frighten me.”

“But if you didn’t invent them,” asked Castiel, frustrated yet amazed, “who did?”

“Darkness. They came out darkness.”

“But you are the darkness. Are you afraid of them only now? Or were you afraid before you were trapped?” asked Castiel, amazement yielding to frustration.

“Afraid. Afraid first. Afraid trapped. Afraid now.”

Castiel knew the darkness was telling the truth. But communication was so painfully slow.

“May I do something to you? He asked.

“More?”               

“Yes. More than now.”

“Yes.” The darkness seemed almost eager for Castiel.

There was nothing for Castiel to touch, to center his healing. So he included the entire darkness to heal and be loved.

“Loved?” asked the darkness. “What is love?”

“Love is the opposite of what trapped you.”

“No.”

Castiel waited.

“Much love. But not for me.”

It made no sense, but Castiel felt empathy toward the darkness. He could feel its pain.

“Do you want to go back to where you were trapped?” he guessed.

“Yes. Safe. But no bats.”

Castiel was lost in a quandary. Even if the darkness was trapped, how could he keep out the thousands of  bats?

“CASTIEL,” said a definitive voice. It could not be the darkness. Castiel recognized the voice.

“CASTIEL!!!” the voice shouted, filling the darkness with sound.

“Father?”

“DO YOU FORGET ME? DO YOU DARE FORGET ME?”

“I am sorry, Father,” said Castiel. “You were gone for so long. Where were you?

“THAT IS AN IMPERTINENT QUESTION FOR A SON TO ASK HIS FATHER. “

Castiel bowed his head in shame.

“WHERE WERE YOU?”

“I have been trying to keep Heaven and the Earth safe.”

“ON WHOSE AUTHORITY?”

Castiel tried to keep his voice steady. “It would have been yours, Father, had I been able to find you.”

“On my authority,” Castiel eventually answered, knowing this was not the answer his Father wanted to hear.

“ON YOUR AUTHORITY? A SERAPH? DID IT NOT OCCUR TO YOU TO CONSULT THE ARCHANGELS?” shouted the voice.

“None of the archangels agreed with me,” Castiel said, feeling six years old. Since he had been created as a full-grown angel, this made little sense. But so much made so little sense lately.

“DID YOU PRAY FOR GUIDANCE?”

“Many times, Father. I know I have made grave mistakes. Please forgive me.”

“YOU STAND ON THE PRECIPICE OF YOUR GREATEST MISTAKE NOW.”

“Trying to trap the darkness?,” asked Castiel. “I thought I was doing Your will.”

“YOU WERE, BUT IN THE WRONG WAY. THE DARKNESS IS CUNNING. IT WILL TRY TO ENTRAP YOU.”

“No, that was the darkness you fought and defeated. This darkness is lost and frightened.”

“WHO ARE YOU TO CONTRADICT ME?”

Castiel knew he was digging himself into an ever deepening hole. Yet when someone was wrong, it was his job to put them right. Even if that someone was his Father.

“I have spent time with the darkness. I have listened to its words and to its song. It is not malevolent. It does not want to hurt me. It wants my help. I can entrap the darkness without anger. Is that not Your will?”

“WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU KNOW MY WILL?” the voice responded.

“I am trying to save Heaven and the Earth from the darkness, Father. I thought this was what you wanted.”

“WHY WOULD YOU THINK I WANT TO SAVE EARTH? WHY DO YOU THINK I AM HERE?”

“To help trap the darkness?” asked Castiel.

“NO,” said the voice. “TO HELP YOU. IF DARWIN WAS RIGHT ABOUT ONE IDEA, IT WAS TO EMBRACE CHANGE. PLANETS CHANGE. EVERYTHING CHANGES. WHY ARE YOU SO ATTACHED TO EARTH, MY SON?”

“I have friends on Earth,” Castiel replied, knowing he sounded stupid, but unwilling to broach the question of free will. “Earth is very beautiful, as are human minds. I want to save them, and their planet.”

Silence prevailed for a long time.

“VERY WELL. EARTH MEANS VERY LITTLE TO ME. BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HOW YOU FARE. YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY MORE QUESTIONING SONS. AND STUBBORN. EARTH IS DUE FOR MASSIVE RESTRUCTURING WITHIN THE NEXT THOUSAND YEARS. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE APPEAL OF THIS SPECIES. HOWEVER, I WILL SAVE IT FROM THIS PARTICULAR SCOURGE.” A brief pause ensued. “IT IS DONE. YOUR EARTH AND YOUR HUMANS ARE SAFE.”

 “Thank you, Father,” Castiel replied humbly, hoping he was right, then chastised himself for his doubt.

“THE DARKNESS STILL NEEDS TO BE CONTAINED.”

“I know. I do not know how,” Castiel said.

“YOU WERE MAKING EXCELLENT PROGRESS BEFORE I ARRIVED.”

Castiel heard a swishing sound and with that his Father was gone. Conversations with his Father, though few and far between, tended to leave Castiel confused and insecure. Even when they agreed, they always seemed to have opposing reasons.

“Darkness, did you hear us?” asked Castiel.

“Afraid. Afraid of your Father. Fought me and trapped me and forced me out.”

“My Father did not force you out. You seem to speak of the trap with such nostalgia and longing,” said Castiel.

“Yes. Trap safe. Want trap.”

“Can you show me where it is?” asked Castiel.

“Yes.” Castiel felt himself being drawn through the darkness. He wondered if he would be trapped, too. After what seemed like forever to Castiel, but was really just a minute or two, Castiel stopped moving,

“Here?” he asked, this section of the darkness indecipherable to Castiel from the rest of the darkness.

“Here. No bats.”

“No bats in the trap now, or take no bats into the trap with you?”

“No bats. Scared bats.”

Castiel sighed in frustration. He could not recall in all his very long life a more difficult conversation. “But they were created as part of you. You are the darkness. You are incorporeal. Bats can’t hurt you,” said Castiel.

“Before trap, not afraid of bats. Did not know fear. Now, afraid of everything. Bats hurt. Talons. Blood. Shriek. No bats in trap.”

“All right,” said Castiel. “After you enter the trap I will take care of the bats.”

“No. Do bats first.”

_Stubborn darkness, Castiel thought. Then he realised the same word had been applied to him recently. Father had called him stubborn. The most stubborn of all angels._

Castiel’s thoughts returned to the bats. He wondered how he could possibly get rid of a universe of huge bats with fangs and talons. He wondered if they could damage him in his incorporeal form. If they attacked rapidly enough, in succession, he wouldn’t have time to heal.

Still, he had promised to get rid of them. Castiel found himself rather liking this incarnation of the darkness. He did not want to disappoint. And he did not break promises if he could help it.

 _“What do I know about bats?” Castiel asked himself. They use echo location; everyone knows that. But_ _how can I use echo location to attract a huge quantity of bats? First I need to determine the frequency of these particular bats. The only way I can see, he sighed, is trial and error. Then I need to find a way to project that frequency so the bats will hear it. Then, I need to amplify the sound as much as possible. The wrong frequency or amplification would deafen the bats, but fortunately they can close their ears. An ability I have often wished for myself. Experimentation with frequencies is safe. Safe but monotonous and not guaranteed to work._

 _Wait a minute. These creatures are_ not _bats. We have been calling them such for convenience. They may be entirely unrelated to bats. Now I have a new problem to worry about. Well, first things first._

“Darkness, can you shape yourself into a giant plate?”

“Why?”

“I need am amplifier to echo back sound to the bats and call them here, in one place.”

“Why?”

Castiel ground his teeth. “Because I can’t fly around the universe killing every bat individually.” Castiel snapped. “And this will only work if I can figure out the right  frequency,” he mumbled to himself.

“Little bats 10,000 Hz.”

“What little bats? How do you know their frequency?”

“Experiment.”

“Why would you want to attract little bats?”

“Friends.”

“You have little bat friends?” asked Castiel in amazement.

“No. They die.”

“Why?”

“The big bats come eat them up. Sad.”

“Wait a minute. You know how to call the little bats and then the big bats?”

“Don’t call big bats. They just come.”

“Would you like to take some little bats into the trap with you, as friends?”

“”Yes! Want friends!”

“And you can call the little bats?”

“Yes but they get eaten.”

“I know. I’m so sorry. But we can save some for friends if that helps us get rid of the big bats. Is that alright?”

“Is that alright?” Castiel repeated loudly.

“No. But do it anyhow.”

Castiel found himself really liking the darkness. He wished it could co-exist with Earth. But that was impossible.

“Can you call the little bats, since you know how?”

“Not all. Some.”

“If you shape yourself into a big dish, they will all come,” Castiel said. “Can you do that?”

Castiel felt a very small change; his ears popped. He wondered if the darkness had really become an amplifier. He heard a tone that apparently the small bats could hear. The sound was excruciating as it got louder and louder. Castiel covered his ears as the sound amplified and multiplied. “STOP!” he yelled.

The darkness was silent again.

“You said could keep little bats,”

“Yes, you can, but that sound almost deafened me,” Castiel answered.

“It is done. Open gate to trap.”

Castiel feared he was going to have to deal with the Mark all over again, but the huge iron gate opened when he pushed. Just in time, as a huge swarm of what looked like fruit bats with fangs and tiny talons appeared. The first twenty or so flew right through the trap’s gate, which Castiel then shoved closed. He didn’t know what to make of all these rather horrifying little bats. However they left him alone, and they seemed to be happy with the darkness.

Suddenly the bats outside the trap began throwing their little bodies frantically toward the gate. Castiel’s stomach fell as he saw the truly hideous huge creatures,  the ones Dean had seen, arrive. Their fangs looked about 18 inches long, their talons not quite as long but very sharp. They flew in droves and killed the little bats. The monsters didn’t even eat their prey. They seemed to kill for fun. Each bat that died disappeared in a tiny puff of smoke. Castiel had an absurd urge to hold the darkness’s hand. Instead, he could feel the darkness reshape itself from amplifier to protector of the trap.

More and more huge bats with their huge fangs and talons appeared. It seemed they delighted in killing the small bats. They shrieked and egged each other on.

“What’s happening?” Castiel asked. “You haven’t emitted another frequency, and you are no longer an amplifier.”

“No need. Big bats just come.”

This was not a particularly satisfying answer. The creatures took no notice of him in his current form. Castiel used this freedom to closely approach the monstrous bat creatures. They were sniffing and looking around for prey. They didn’t seem to use echolocation at all. It seemed they could smell and see, like any predator.

After an incalculable timeless horror, the monsters ran out of small bats to kill and began killing each other. Had Castiel been in his vessel, he would have thrown up. Though he had no liking for the creatures, it was still horrible to hear them shriek and see them dive at each other, again killing each other for fun. The dead bat creatures disappeared with a pop, a much louder pop that hurt Castiel’s ears.

This seemed to go on forever, but finally the last few monstrosities killed each other with shrieks and painful pops. The ensuing silence, at first deafening, became more and more comfortable until both Castiel and the darkness grew accustomed to the lack of din.

A sort of darker, roundish darkness convened by the trap’s gate.

“Uh, I guess it’s time to let you in,” said Castiel.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? Because once I lock this gate behind me, there is no coming out again. No more key.”

“Good.”

Castiel could hear the sounds of the little bats already in the trap. Some of them were knocking on the gate. Castiel wondered if he’d made a mistake locking in the bats. But if he let them out, any remaining beasts would find them and finish them off.

“Ready?” Castiel asked the darkness.

“Almost.”

“What’s left to do?”

“Th – thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Castiel answered slowly.

It seemed as if they were prolonging their parting, though Castiel thought this was a ridiculous idea. Still, he felt as if he were about to lose a friend. Had he been in his vessel, he might have cried. Instead, he opened the gate, glad that none of the little bats made any attempt to fly out. Instead, they squeaked at the darkness, clearly happy to be safe with their friend. Castiel watched for a moment, then shut the gate and slid the locks closed. By all rights he should feel happy, but instead he felt depleted and sad. He thought of checking the rest of the universe for stray monsters, then decided the universe was full of dangers and he couldn’t possibly defeat all of them.

He suddenly felt tired, very tired, so tired he might disintegrate. Suddenly, he felt a warm and glowing presence holding him up.

“WELL DONE, MY SON. YOU MUST SPEAK OF THIS TO NO ONE. I AM GLAD I CHOSE YOU. YOU NEED AN OPEN HEART TO MEET THE DARKNESS, BECOME ITS FRIEND AND ENTRAP IT FOREVER. YOUR STUBBORNNESS IS MATCHED ONLY BY YOUR OPEN MINDEDNESS. YET I DO NOT BELIEVE THE UNIVERSE IS READY FOR MORE KINDNESS.

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU. IS THERE ANYTHING YOU DESIRE?”

“I am so tired, Father. So very very tired. I would like to be able to sleep.”

“THIS CAN BE GRANTED, ALTHOUGH YOU CAN SLEEP ONLY ON EARTH. ANYWHERE ELSE YOU WILL FALL INTO HIBERNATION. I WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU, OR RECEPTIVE TO YOUR PLIGHT. THIS IS YOUR DECISION, AND IT CANNOT BE UNDONE. ARE YOU CERTAIN THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT?

“Yes. I have longed for sleep since I discovered it existed.”

“THEN YOU MAY HAVE IT.”

========

Castiel woke to find himself in a spare bedroom in the attic. He felt deliciously sated, as if he had consumed some strange and wondrous potion. He could smell coffee from the kitchen, and see a little ray of sun from his window. He put on the bathrobe neatly folded on the foot of his bed. It felt remarkably soft and warm. He wandered into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes from sleep.

“Good morning,” he said. Both Winchesters turned around in amazement.

“You’re back!” shouted Sam.

“And you didn’t think to call first?” asked Dean, beaming.

“I left my phone here. I could not use it in my incorporeal state. Besides I was busy trapping the darkness. The darkness is quite sweet, you know. It’s the bats that were problematic. And they exist no more,” Castiel said, staring Dean in the eye to convey how serious he was.

Dean stared back at Castiel’s very corporeal face for perhaps a few moments longer than necessary.

“Hey Cas,” said Sam, after the mutual staring was over. “You did it! You conquered the darkness, dude. Thank you!”

“Yeah, Cas. Thank you. For everything,” Dean said, keeping close eye contact with Castiel as he spoke.

“I wish we could do something for you in return,” Sam said.

 “I would like a cup of coffee if there is any left.” Castiel yawned. “Excuse me,” he apologized, and yawned widely again. “I’m not yet accustomed to waking up. I had a beautiful dream. I dreamed of you, Dean. We were unclothed, and-”

“That’s enough, Cas,” Dean interrupted, smiling. “So you sleep now? How did that happen? Are you human again?

“No. This is still my vessel. I am still an angel,” he replied.

“An angel who can sleep,” Sam marvelled.

“An angel who can get bed head,” Dean added.

“Bed Head?” Castiel asked, puzzled. “Does something happen to my head when I sleep? Is it bad? Was this a poor decision?”

Dean laughed. “Only you, Cas. Only you. Bed head is no biggie. It means your hair is messed up from having been in bed for hours.”

“Oh,” Castiel replied. “Is it offensive, like morning mouth? Do humans brush their teeth _and_ their hair every morning?”

“You look adorable,” Dean answered. Sam gave Cas a mug of freshly brewed coffee and walked upstairs to the bunker door.

“Hey Dean!” Sam called down as he opened the bunker door. “It’s gone. The darkness. It’s totally gone.” A huge crooked Sam smile covered his face. “I’m gonna leave the door open to let the light in.”

“And the bats?” asked Dean. “They really are gone?”

“Not a bat to be seen.” Sam smiled as he walked upstairs to the kitchen.

“Yes, I know,” Cas replied, as he pulled up a chair and sat down to drink his coffee. “Actually the darkness and I saved a few of the small bats in the trap. They’ve become friends, the small bats and the darkness.”

Dean could have sworn he saw a tiny smile before Cas’s lips touched the cup.

“Welcome home,” said Sam, still smiling.

“Yeah, welcome home,” added Dean. He ran his fingers through Cas’s hair, trying to get the tangles out.

“What are you doing?” Cas asked, startled.

“Just trying to get some of the morning hair mess straightened out,” Dean replied. “You got a lot of hair, dude. This’ll take forever.”

“I think I will enjoy sleeping,” Cas said. “Especially straightening out the morning Bed Head. It is a good thing I have a lot of hair to straighten out.”

Dean laughed, Sam chuckled, and Cas made his usual confused half smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N
> 
> For some reason I had a really hard time with this story. I believe this work is finished, but I'm not 100% sure. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed my take on the darkness.
> 
> Comments are great. I love comments. Constructive criticism comments are fine. Without comments I feel like I am writing into a void.


	7. Epilogue: The Attic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This story didn't feel quite finished to me, so I added an epilogue.
> 
> It's very silly and offers a nice counterpoint to the seriousness of some of the rest of the story.
> 
> If you prefer the story without an epilogue, please let me know in a comment. Sometimes I find it very hard to get a good perspective on my own writing.

The brothers could find no hunter work (they might not have tried very hard) and the three of them enjoyed a lazy day of lounging on couches and re-watching Cas’s favorite odd and seemingly unrelated DVDs. Sam and Dean figured getting rid of the darkness was worth a day of letting Cas choose DVDs. He discovered by accident that some DVDs could be watched in other languages, or with foreign subtitles. By dinnertime they’d watched Beauty and the Beast in Spanish, French, and Portuguese. They’d also watched it in English with Spanish, French, and Portuguese subtitles. The brothers were so bored they drank so much beer that they kept nodding out. Although they’d done almost nothing but sit on their asses, stare at the TV, and drink beer, they were very tired and decided to go to bed early.

Dean lay awake for hours. He couldn’t get over the fact that Cas was here, sleeping in the bunker. _Sleeping_ in the bunker. He couldn’t image Cas sleeping. How? He felt mixed about it; clearly Castiel loved sleeping, but Dean felt unprotected. Castiel had never said as much, but Dean thought he spent many nights, in the bunker or somewhere else, anywhere else, watching over him with his beautiful round blue angel eyes.

He just couldn’t wrap his head around why Cas would want to sleep. Dean had always thought that sleeping was a waste of time. And not sleeping was such a major part of being an angel. Had Cas lost part of his angelhood? He’d said he was still an angel, but Dean couldn’t let go of his irrational fear. And Cas chose to come back to the bunker to sleep. Did that mean he lived there? That Dean would wake up every morning and see Cas, awake or asleep? He wondered why Cas chose to sleep in the attic, then immediately answered himself. Cas had wings, a creature of the sky, and the attic was the only room in the bunker with a window. It must have been a lookout at one point, because it was quite high up in an unlikely stone tower for a bunker.

Dean spent a long time vacillating. _I should go check on him, he’s not used to sleeping, maybe the sheets are tangled around his face and he can’t breathe. And we never really formally invited him to live in the bunker. We really should do that. On the other hand, what if I wake him? Shouldn’t I let him enjoy his sleep? But why is he sleeping now? Cas wouldn’t make a deal with a demon? Again? I just want to make sure he’s ok. What if it’s dusty there and he can’t breathe well? I’ll just take a quick look and come back to bed._

It was always cold in the bunker. Dean put on a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt and quietly crept out of his room and up the stairs to the attic. He opened the door very gently and panicked. He couldn’t see Cas anywhere. Then he noticed that Cas had moved the cot under the window, presumably so he could look out at the night before he fell asleep. _What if he didn’t want to sleep? What if it was a punishment of some sort? Don’t wake him up to ask him, he told himself. You can talk tomorrow._ But it seemed more appropriate to talk in the attic.Dean carefully and quietly moved a chair to the head of Cas’s cot. He could see the moon out the little bunker window; it really was a beautiful view. _“I can go for a walk outside if I want to see the moon,” Dean told himself. “I don’t have to bother Castiel.”_ But he couldn’t bring himself to leave. He sat on the chair at the head of the bed, watching Castiel breathe in his sleep, listening to quiet snoring. He finally nodded off in the uncomfortable wooden straight-backed chair.

“Hello Dean.”

Dean woke with a start to the familiar greeting. His head had fallen down to his chest while he slept, giving him a major neck ache.

“Would you like me to fix your neck?” Castiel asked. “It’s very important to sleep in a restorative position, to help the cells regenerate. I’ve been researching. Sleeping on a chair with your chin on your neck is not a restorative position.”

“Uh, sure,” mumbled Dean, half awake. He lifted his head for the usual forehead touch. But this time Castiel turned Dean’s head and touched the back of his neck with his lips, causing all the little hairs there to stand up on end. Dean couldn’t help a sudden intake of breath.

“Don’t worry, Dean, “said Castiel. “In cases of specific muscle damage, it is simpler to heal by touching the area that needs healing.”

 _Touching it with your mouth? Dean thought. Is that a kiss? Did Castiel just kiss me?_ He couldn’t help a deep blush, and hoped it wasn’t noticeable in the darkness. “Uh, thanks, Cas. That really helped.”

“I’m glad.”

“Uh, you know this cot seems pretty uncomfortable,” said Dean. “We could bring a real bed upstairs for you.”

“That would be nice,” Cas answered, “if it’s not too much trouble. But I’m afraid we’d wake Sam if we did it now.”

“Oh, no, no,” said Dean, feeling like an idiot for blushing at the words “if we did it now.” Fortunately, it was dark, and Cas couldn’t see Dean’s bright red face. Still, he stood up. He needed a little space to cool down.

“If you’re looking for a more comfortable chair, there’s a very unusual one in the corner that you might like. It moves as you lean back, and a little table for your feet pops up. I found it strange at first, but then quite comfortable.”

Dean grinned. “You mean the plaid lazy boy. I fell asleep in that chair more times than I can count, reading or just looking out the window. I stopped reading there at night cause I kept waking myself up when the book fell out of my hands onto my lap.”

“Really?” said Cas, leaning on an elbow. “I never took you for much of a reader.”

“Well,” Dean blushed again, “Some of the books might have been magazines.”

“Magazines with pictures, actually,” added Dean, kicking himself in the head for not shutting up.

“Oh, you mean those magazines with photographs of naked people in unusual positions,” said Cas.

Dean felt like he could fry an egg on his cheek, it was that hot.

“They seemed to be engaged in different forms of sexual intercourse,” Castiel continued, “although some of the positions looked quite uncomfortable.”

Dean took a deep breath. “Cas, how’s about we stop talking about porn, ok? He was very glad it was dark and he was wearing big roomy  sweatpants.

“Oh. All right. I had assumed you wanted to talk about it, since you brought up the topic. What would you prefer to discuss?  
_Getting into your cot and attacking you, Dean thought._ “I was wondering. How is it that you sleep now?”

“I was given a present.”

“Sleep?!” Dean asked, clearly confused.

“Well, I was told to choose anything I wanted, and I chose sleep. I was very tired, and I have often envied humans their ability to sleep. Although now I think I might have made a different choice.”

“What’s that?” asked Dean.

“I would have chosen the ability to sleep with you.”

Dean sighed. “I don’t know where the sleep comes from, but you don’t need a present to sleep with someone.” _How the hell did I get into this conversation? What’s the matter with me?_

“Nothing’s the matter with you, Dean. I think you approach perfection.”

“What?!!” Dean shouted. “You’ve been reading my thoughts all this time? Without my permission? Geesh, Cas. I told you ages ago not to do that. Especially not now.” Dean started shaking with a mixture of desire and embarrassment.

“I was not reading your thoughts, Dean. I would not invade your privacy like that. Sometimes you have exceptionally loud thoughts. I cannot help hearing them. It’s like trying to ignore the sound of a hurricane.”

 _“Oh great,” Dean thought. “I’ve been blasting how much I love Cas, how much I want to fuck him, as loud as a hurricane.”_ He immediately blushed again. “Can you possibly not hear my thoughts right now?”

“Of course. Wait while I adjust my reception. Ok. I cannot hear you think anymore.”

“What’s wrong, Dean? I promise I can’t hear what you’re thinking. Though I can guess.”

“You can guess. Great. What’s your guess?”

“I guess that you are thinking about how much you want to have sexual intercourse with me,” said Cas.

“Aaarrggghh!” Dean shouted. “Do you _have_ to be so literal? It would have been ok just to say I was thinking about you.” Dean bent over, resting his elbows on his knees and holding his head in his hands.

“So you do not want to have sexual intercourse with me?” asked Cas, with all the emotion of a mannequin.

“No! I mean yes! Yes I want to have sexual int- sex with you, and hold you and sleep with you right now and forever. Happy?” Dean was almost about to cry.

“Yes, that makes me very happy. I have wanted to do that for a long time. A very long time. Since the first time I saw you, when I rescued you from perdition,” Cas replied.

“Then why the hell didn’t you say so??!” Dean shouted.

“I did not think my feelings were reciprocated,” Cas said quietly. “You seemed to favor nubile young girls in tight clothing with a lot of hair. I did not think you would be interested in an angel in a male vessel.”

“Oh Cas,” Dean said. “Cas, Cas, Cas. None of those girls meant a thing to me. It was like, like scratching an itch. Ya know?”

“No, I don’t know,” said Cas. He sounded and looked rather deflated. “Angels do not itch.”

“The itching doesn’t matter. It was a meta, um, a meta, damn.”

“I think you mean a metaphor. There is no “dam” at the end of the word.”

“I give up,” said Dean, and threw himself onto Castiel’s cot. It was a narrow cot and Dean hit it with quite a bit of velocity. Castiel had to grab onto him to avoid falling out the other side of the cot. Dean grabbed him back, then just lay next to, him savoring every little bit. His shoulders, his hips, his hair, his breath. Dean had never smelled anything more delicious than Cas. “Ummm,” he said, not quite intentionally. “Do all angels have such sweet breath?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” Cas answered. “I have never smelled another angel’s breath. Do all humans smell as delicious as you? You smell like the earth and trees, coffee and home.” Castiel hesitated a moment. “I mean, you smell the way I imagine home might smell. I didn’t mean to imply that”

“That this is your home?” Dean interrupted. “It can be, if you want it.”

“Yes, I would like that very much,” Castiel said, with one of his rare smiles. He paused, and Dean sensed a tension that was not there a minute ago.

“What’s wrong, Cas? You really don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to.”

Cas ignored Dean and continued with his own train of thought. “I would like to ask you something,” he said.

“Ask away, said Dean.

“Earlier you said we could bring up a bed for me. If I will be living here, can we bring up a larger bed? Made for two people to sleep in? This one is very small. Parts of me keep sliding off.”

Dean grinned. “We can turn the whole attic into one big bed if you like.”

“Really?” Cas asked. “Not the entire attic; we do not need that much room. But for now, I would like to make a pile of sheets and blankets and spend the night on the floor. Now that I sleep, I am afraid I’ll roll over and either roll on top of you or right off the cot.”

“Sure,” said Dean. “We could do that. It’d be like camping. And tomorrow we can remake the room any way you like. Why the sad face?” Castiel looked devastated.

“I was hoping that you could sleep with me in this room every night. That this could be our room,” Castiel said with a sigh.

“I thought we settled that already,” said Dean. “This is our room. It can stay our room as long as you like.”

“Will you miss your own room?” asked Castiel.

Dean snorted. “I don’t think we need to worry about that,” he said, thinking of the narrow bed, the bare basics scratched and dented furniture, and the huge pile of clothes on the floor. Which gave him an idea. He grabbed all the bedclothes, including a tangled Castiel, and pulled them onto the floor, taking care to make sure Castiel landed on the comforter. He didn’t look hurt, just surprised.

“Is that part of a bedtime ritual?” Castiel asked.

“Nope,” Dean answered. “One-time only show. Ummmmm” he said as he stretched out on the floor. “Much more comfortable.” He snuggled up to Cas and sighed, running his fingers through the long curly black hair.

“That feels very nice,” said Cas.

“Um-hmmm,” Dean answered, very lightly scratching Cas’s scalp.

“Even nicer,” Cas mumbled into Dean’s chest. “Is this part of Bed Head too?” he sighed.

Dean laughed. “Sure kiddo. This could be part of our bedtime routine,” he said. “Like a goodnight kiss. Plus a bit more.”

“Like this?” Cas asked, planting tiny kisses all over Dean’s face before zeroing in on a long, passionate kiss.

“Whoa,” said Dean. “Where did you learn to do that? Angel sex school?”

Cas tilted his head. “I’ve never heard of angel sex school. Remember in Heaven we are not contained in our vessels. I do not think it would be possible to have sex. I’m glad I chose this vessel.”

“How come?”

“Because you make it very happy.”

Dean sighed and started kissing Cas’s neck, slowly moving up for another kiss.

“I think I made the right choice for a present,” Cas said.

Dean smiled. “Ya think? Just don’t fall asleep for a little while, ok?”

“I won’t,” said Cas. “In fact, do you think we could do a little more good-night Bed Head?”

“Sure,” said Dean, luxuriating in the feel of Cas’s hair. “Only you better watch out. I think you’ve got yourself a new nickname.”

“Ummm,” said Cas. “What’s the nickname?”

“Bed head, you silly angel,” answered Dean.

“I am _not_ silly,” said Cas.

“Wanna bet?” Dean started tickling Cas all over,  and, to the angel’s surprise, he found himself laughing.

“What,” he said, gasping for breath, “is this called?”

“Tickling,” Dean grinned. “You like it?”

“Yes, but it makes it hard to breathe. I’ll show you.” Castiel started tickling Dean with surprising dexterity till Dean pushed him away.

“Can’t,” Dean laughed and gasped for air, “can’t breathe.”

“Can we try something that lets us both breath?” Cas asked.

“Sure,” Dean said. “I happen to be an excellent teacher.”

Dean showed Cas many things, and later, they fell asleep in each other’s arms. Cas had definitely chosen the right present.


End file.
